Will the iPad really revolutionize higher ed?
April 12, 2010 by Jacob HawleyPosted in: In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views, Tech News
The iPad has landed – and already colleges are scrambling to get in on the action. But how much will the new device change higher education?
Seton Hill University, George Fox University and Abilene Christian University have all pre-ordered iPads to give to students and staff in the fall semester. Their reasoning: The Apple tablet may make standard texts obsolete, by publishing less expensive (and less heavy) e-textbooks.
One problem: Apple hasn’t made any deals with publishers to bring academic texts to the iPad’s iBooks store. Right now, students can access about 10,000 e-textbooks through CourseSmart, a third-party company.
Colleges aren’t just anticipating the iPad to change textbook use – it may change curricula, too. George Fox and Abilene Christian expect to train teachers to integrate mobile web software and apps into their lessons.
Abilene Christian has also repurposed its Web site and newspaper into an iPad app to launch in the App Store.
This isn’t the first time an e-reader has tried to crack the textbook market: Amazon’s Kindle DX was aimed at students. But because of slow performance and limited interactive features (students have pointed out that bookmarks, highlights and margin notes were part of how they used their textbooks – which couldn’t be replicated on the Kindle), it didn’t make much of an impression.
With its quick loads, full-color touchscreen and downloadable applications, the iPad may have greater success among students than the Kindle.
Is the iPad going to revolutionize education, or have these schools jumped the gun? Share your thoughts in the comments section.
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Tags: Abilene Christian University, George Fox University, iPads in schools, Seton Hill University
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April 14th, 2010 at 11:02 am
Uh-huh. The iPad will revolutionize education just like the Palm Pilot revolutionized education.
Anyone remember how many academic papers were published glowing about how the Palm Pilot transformed classroom teaching? I do.
April 14th, 2010 at 12:57 pm
These universities do not pay attention to how students operate. The obvious medium to deploy e-textbooks is the laptop/netbook, since many students are already carrying one. Students don’t want to carry both an iPad and netbook, and they aren’t going to do extensive typing on an iPad.
April 14th, 2010 at 1:48 pm
Effective tablet computing will eventually transform the classroom, assuming it takes hold in the culture. Smartphones have become ubiquitous, and now present unique challenges and opportunities to educators. The same with notebook computers. Whether or not the iPad itself will prove to be a game-changing device or not is one we can speculate but only market adoption will tell the story.
As for any classroom tool, whether or not it “changes education,” it will be useful to know how effective it is in a test market and learn from their experiences. Consider teh “classroom clicker” tools that allow students to give feedback on computer generated quizzes or surveys. They ahve educational value; and for instructors who choose to utilize them they are fine; however, their function and capacity being limited, their possibilities would be much mroe limited.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:13 pm
Yo Hank,
Of course they can do extensive typing on it. It has a large touchscreen keyboard that is 20x bigger than the twiddly little things they text on all day long. The Palm was and is a boring PC device for boring business people, that runs/ran annoying PC programs that don’t work very well and have a very limited range of uses, while every student i have has an ipod or an iphone that are considered cool and loaded with apps that are actually useful and/or fun.